With the theatrical Canadian rock act readying their second album, they talk about being goofy and serious at the same time, and their new style of world music.

Since the release of their self-titled debut album in 2011, Canada's face-painted Yamantaka // Sonic Titan have been met with some confusion. "Is it performance art? Is it music? Post-punk? Prog-rock?" people wonder. Led by drummer Alaska B and singer Ruby Kato Attwood, the group isn't offering any easy answers; last fall, they unveiled a new rock opera about murderous rival drag queens called 33, and they're also working on a video game with the phenomenal title YOUR TASK // SHOOT THINGS.

But at the moment they're concentrating on something a bit more traditional: their second album. UZU-- out October 29 via Suicide Squeeze/Paper Bag-- features an extension of their previously coined “Noh-wave” sound, a loose combination of metal and theatrics, as heard on first single "One". On the record, they do operatic piano ballads along with sludgy tracks about death. And once again, they cull influences from mythology, cosmology, and various spiritual and religious stories. But while they invoke deities and write epic stories of destruction and heartbreak, they’re also creating allegories inspired by the band’s real lives. “This record is a lot more poignant and human than the first one,” says Alaska. “It deals with internal conflicts like love, hate-- the whole damn thing.”

UZU is also partially about the two characters Ruby and Alaska portray in the group, the Monk and the Monkey, references to the 16th century Chinese text Journey to the West. The Monk represents reflection, and the Monkey represents chaos. “We definitely take part in both roles at some points,” says Ruby, and it's easy to hear the two sides over the phone: After discussing Buddhist cosmology and how “you can’t take it with you” in the end, they fall into a bit about bringing their extensive collections of Pogs and Pokémon cards into the afterlife.

But of course, they take what they do very seriously, swiftly objecting to my use of the word “escapism” in reference to prog rock. “You can’t escape,” Ruby says; Alaska adds, “You can only paint pretty pictures.”

"I think of our work as world music for a new generation."

Pitchfork: Since the songs on the album are partially inspired by actual events, is it hard to navigate the balance between reality and fiction?

Alaska B: What people often forget is that every time someone writes a narrative and it’s about their life, that’s the most over-processed, fake-ass version of their life.

Ruby Kato Attwood: It’s like taking a selfie. You think it’s just like, “I woke up and looked like this.” No! You can’t cut your heart out and lay it out on a platter for someone to eat.

AB: There’s definitely an aspect of [real life] that could get lost in [the songs] because we don’t name names, but if that’s what you’re expecting, then you’re in love with the delusion of reality rather than a purposeful illusion of fantasy. I like the covers of Yes records. I like imagining things outside of the norm. I like that aspect of prog more than the noodle-y parts.

Pitchfork: What’s the unifying concept behind UZU?

RA: This record has a lot of references to the characters that are in the band and from the previous record-- all of our work exists in this universe with different planets, but the characters travel between those worlds. For this record, we were traversing the interior worlds of the characters.

AB: The first album is a lot about cities at war; the second one is more about people in the cities. Instead of looking at a city of buildings, it’s about looking inside of those buildings. There are stories of people rising up to the level of gods and falling, stories of people having loved and lost, people having never had. It’s way more about individual experience.

RA: We focused on this record on a goddess called Mazu, who’s pictured on the cover.

AB: She’s a little girl who has to come to terms with having this calling of greater power of a relationship with the ocean. She is unable to save both her brother and her father from drowning, and after her father dies, she decides that she’s not meant to be in the human world and chooses to leave. It’s an undercurrent that runs throughout the entire record-- the feeling of loss and finding your place within a structure, even if that place is somewhere else.

RA: It's also about the Buddhist concept of the waves of consciousness, and how that creates suffering. The movement of the waves and their relationship to the moon has been considered a source of delusion for a long time, but also a great source of power in life, so it’s this deep paradox. For example, [Yoga deity] Patañjali considers our observance of the sun and the moon-- the passage of time of day and night-- as one of the keystones to our suffering and our disillusion to the concept of the world as a whole. Within that tradition, they think that the soul is drawn away from its true connection with the divine-- through the movement of the sun and moon, you’re distracted from your own spiritual or personal path. For us as Buddhists, it’s about getting enveloped in the movement of life and the push and pull of the tides and surges of emotion and voids that are often left in their wake.

AB: Some people just want to fill this world with silly love songs-- Paul McCartney said that.

Pitchfork: Your work seems to fold in elements from different cultures, which is interesting because UZU literally has lyrics about worlds colliding.

AB: We live in a globalized world, but we’ve always been critical of trapping this concept of world music. It’s actually kind of embarrassing: When you look at the history of world music, you’ll look at members of the Grateful Dead pulling in [Indian musician] Zakir Hussain. But you have a whole bunch of jazz musicians like Yusef Lateef in the 50s and 60s, or Sun Ra Arkestra, or Thelonious Monk, who are playing with the concepts of world music. They were considering what it’s like to be black in America by removing America from the equation and looking at the worlds of Islam and its more sufi-esque, mystical fantasy elements.

Now you have a band like Goat, who are from Sweden, which is as far from Africa as it gets, and they've got this pseudo-African-style face paint. I think they’re a pretty good band, but we’re now in the era where you don’t need a National Geographic subscription. You can go to the library or the internet and you can just take it with zero conversation.

I think of our work as world music for a new generation, where there really is exchange. I’ve been to China, but that doesn’t really inform who I am as being Chinese. My identity is more formed by who I am in America growing up in the prairies. Same with all the other people we meet, they're all coming to terms with what their culture has become. When we’re connecting [different cultures], there’s a voyeuristic aspect. People question it. But there really isn’t any reason why except this is what we’re making. There’s an extreme authenticity to it. There’s no pretension. We’re not like, “Oh yeah, this world music is so cool.” It's just what we’re influenced by. It’s around. We think it’s important to have representation because that’s really what’s missing.

Bands like Indian Handcrafts and Indian Jewelry are nothing more than Fake Indian Handcrafts and Fake Indian Jewelry, because you’ve got the name of the concept, but where are the Native people involved? It becomes completely placed in this position of not being Native, not being Asian, not being a minority, and the engagement is with trivial capitalist objects. Like, “Look, we’re wearing the headdress.” These are all spoils of war, in a way. When we’re doing it, it’s more about people who have learned from each other and have formed our own version of community. It's not really cerebral as much as it's a no-brainer.

Pitchfork: Do you think your work can be daunting to people who are new to it?

RA: It can be unexpected-- which can be daunting for the faint of heart. But we just like to have fun with our friends and do our music because we want to. It’s not necessarily about the depth of it. We have a personal relationship with it and we participate with that depth, but at the end of the day it’s pretty goofy.